


a kiss and a star

by 70sBabe



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Literati, One Shot, jess can't hate poetry, set like right after they started dating, sweet dorks, the beats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 19:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18644464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/70sBabe/pseuds/70sBabe
Summary: Rory finds out why Jess allegedly hates poetry but still loves the Beat poets(it always bothered me in There's The Rub when Jess says he doesn't like poetry and yet throughout the show, he's seen reading poetry books, so I wrote an explanation)





	a kiss and a star

They’re sitting on her porch, both reading (he’s thumbing through _In Cold Blood_ , she’s engrossed in _The Age of Innocence_ ). Her legs are stretched out, feet resting in his lap, and it’s the kind of domestic scene that should have made him sick, but it doesn’t. He’s enjoying himself too much to feel disgusted.

It’s late autumn and there’s a bite to the air, but not enough of one to make things unpleasant. The leaves that are still attached to tree limbs are red-gold. They’ve just barely begun their senior year of high school. Thanksgiving break is next week. Jess is happy.

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

“You can’t hate poetry.”

Jess looks up from his book and stares at Rory, brow furrowed in confusion because they’ve been sitting in silence for the last half hour and he can’t remember the last time they discussed poetry so what is she talking about? She’s smiling like she just figured out the answer to an extra-credit test question.

“Why am I not allowed to hate poetry?” He figured he might as well take the bait now; they would be having this conversation regardless.

“It’s not that you’re not allowed,” she rolls her eyes. “It’s that you simply _can’t_ hate poetry.”

She’s being purposefully vague because she knows it will drive him crazy and he should be annoyed but she’s smiling and how could he begrudge her this little joke of hers?

“And why can’t I?”

“Because you’re obsessed with the Beats,” she says, an unspoken “duh!” in her voice. “Most of whom were, quite famously, I might add, poets. The first book we ever shared is one of the most well-known poems of all time!”

Her eyes are shining with triumph and Jess has to admit, she has him backed into a corner. He’s had this same exact argument with himself a few times, but always finds a way to rationalize the difference between the poetry he loves and the poetry he doesn’t quite understand.

“It’s different,” he finally shrugs. “The words, I mean. The way they get used.”

He pauses but she thinks he’s done, so she jiggles one of her legs that rest in his lap impatiently and says, “Explain, please!”

She gets like this sometimes, a little brusque, a little childish. Jess chalks it up to her having to play the pleasantly precocious kid 24/7 with everybody else. Her time with him is a break, a chance to flex that brat muscle. He likes it. It’s nice to see her in a different light than anyone else does, a light that doesn’t give her the halo that everyone assumes is a permanent fixture.

So he explains, if only to get her to stop jostling him.

“Ginsberg, Bukowski, Corso, they all said exactly what they meant,” he fiddles absentmindedly with her shoelace. “No artifice, no hiding behind a metaphor, no rhyme schemes. Even the stuff that doesn’t make sense to me still hits me right _here_ ,” he thumps his chest. “Because I know that it made sense to them. It’s how they saw the world. It’s real.”

“And what’s not real about Langston Hughes?” Rory raises an eyebrow. “Or Sylvia Plath? Shel Silverstein?”

“Well, without good ol’ Shel, I never would’ve figured out where the sidewalk ends, so he’s okay in my book,” Jess shakes his head goodnaturedly.

“But seriously.” She is refusing to let him deflect, refusing to let him throw this whole conversation away with a few jokes.

“Seriously….” Jess muses. “Well, I get what you mean, I do. I mean, I wouldn’t dare speak ill of Plath in the home of Rory Gilmore.”

She giggles at that and it warms Jess’ heart.

“And I respect poets, I do,” he continues. “But the Beats….I don’t know, it just _feels_ more to me, you know?”

He knows he’s not making any sense, but if anyone would understand, it would be her. Worth a shot, right?

“It speaks to you,” she says simply and, yeah, that isn’t exactly how Jess would have put it, but it works, so he lets it go.

“Yeah, sure,” he chuckles. “And it says, ‘Jess Mariano, these words are yours.’”

“Are they?” She’s curious now and he half-wishes he hadn’t said anything at all.

“Well,” he rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. “I mean, yeah.”

She just keeps looking at him, like they’re in a play and he has the next line, so he searches for something to say.

“‘ _And the things he sees are bigger than himself and the things he sees are his reality_.’”

“Whose words are those?” Rory doesn’t appear to be thrown by him quoting a poem she’s never heard before. If he was one to believe in fate, he might call her his soulmate, at least for right now, in this moment.

“Lawrence Ferlinghetti,” Jess presses his lips together, trying to decide whether or not to volunteer more information. He takes the plunge. “The poem is called ‘Dog’ and yeah, it’s about a dog, but, I don’t know, it just….hits on something in me. Makes me sit up and pay attention when I read it.”

“I like it,” Rory smiles, swinging her legs off his lap and scooting closer to him. He smiles back when she slips her hand into his and twines their fingers together. “I also like that you can recite poetry from memory. Very romantic. Very hot. Very nerdy.”

“Oh, God,” Jess groans. “I’m never gonna hear the end of this, am I?”

“Tell me some more of those words,” her head is leaning on his shoulder now, but she twists slightly to meet his eyes. “The words that belong to you, too.”

“Why?”

“A little insight into your character.”

“Just listen to _Dark Side of the Moon_ in its entirety, you’ll get the same effect.”

“ _Jess_.”

And the way she says it, a mix of annoyance and genuine affection, breaks him. She always breaks him, in the best ways possible.

“‘ _I have the upper hand but if I keep it up I’ll lose the circulation in one arm_.’”

“Dorothy Parker?” she wrinkles her nose, trying to figure out which tortured Beat writer found a little time for some silliness and settling on a woman who was not a Beat at all, not even close.

“Diane DiPrima, one of the few females in the Beat’s inner circle.”

“More poetry please, and be serious this time.”

He clears his throat, feeling self-conscious again because he’s about to give her some real words, words that echoed through his soul for days after he read them.

“‘ _It’s impossible to make clear. I wanted something, someone I could not have, until I began to sound like him, imitate him_.’”

She sits up suddenly, her eyes studying him with an intensity that makes him squirm.

“John Wieners wrote that,” Jess tries to move on before they can even start. “Unfortunate name, but a good poet.”

“You should have taken his advice.”

“What?” Jess is sure his confusion is evident on his face.

“Imagine how much quicker I would have warmed to you if you’d been as pleasant as Dean,” she smirks a little, which is how Jess knows she’s just saying this to get a rise out of him and it almost works, but he takes a deep breath and tries to see the humor in the situation.

“What did you think I was doing that week I didn’t use any hair gel? Remember how I looked at the Bid-A-Basket thing? Floppy hair and all?” He wants her to think he’s joking, but he’s not really (she had made some crack about all the product he used and he wondered if maybe she’d see him in a new light if he let his hair lay flat like Dean’s, so he stopped caking it in gel and spent a week feeling slightly uncomfortable). The lengths he went to, the lengths he contemplated going to, all for her, were slightly ridiculous.

“You’re kidding,” her mouth is open in an “o” of surprise and he likes knowing that he can do that, that no matter what happens, he’ll always be able to surprise her.

“Yeah, I am,” he laughs, relieved she bought his nonchalance, so he lets a fib roll easily off his tongue. “Luke got mad at me and threw out the gel in a really immature expression of anger.”

“But is that how you felt?” She’s back on the poetry again and he wishes this can of worms was glued shut. “That I was something you couldn’t have?”

“Well, you were pretty seriously involved with someone else,” he deadpans. “And who was I to get in the way of true love?”

“Oh yeah, you just burned, pined, and perished in silence,” Rory snorts. Her next words are dripping with sarcasm. “If Dean hadn’t blown your cover while he was unceremoniously dumping me, I _never_ would have known your true feelings.” 

Jess likes that she can joke about the total soap opera that was the dance marathon. It had been a sensitive subject and they both preferred to leave it undiscussed, but it was nice to know Rory wasn’t letting the wound fester.

“Hey, you didn’t hear the end of the poem!” He slings his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him.

“Okay, so what’s the end?”

Jess clears his throat theatrically, causing Rory to elbow him.

“Get on with it, Laurence Olivier.”

“‘ _And what I wanted wanted me_ ,’” Jess says simply and the silly grin on Rory’s face softens into a look of terribly gentle fondness.

“Well,” she finally says. “I’m glad there’s a happy ending for Mr. Wieners. With a last name like that, he needs a little good fortune.”

“So can we be done with this poetry recitation?”

“Okay, fine,” she sighs in mock-disappointment before wiggling around in her seat so that she can plant a kiss on him.

Jess is still getting used to this sort of kiss, a kiss that isn’t all hot breath and roving hands and a feeling of urgency. Sure, they have those kisses, but there are also kisses of a calmer variety. Lips closed, soft and gentle, nothing but a pure physical expression of the words “I like you so much.”

Rory leans back, smiles at him, and then picks up her book again. Within seconds, she is sucked back into the doomed romance of Archer and Ellen and Jess marvels at the fact that he has found someone so fundamentally like himself, yet so completely different.

He likes that she cares about something he said months ago to that crazy friend of hers, Paris, something he said quickly and without much thought. He likes that she asked him to explain. He likes that she understands. He likes her.

Another line of a poem he half-remembers springs into his head: “ _How beautiful is love, and the fruit thereof, holy holy holy, a kiss and a star_.”

He opens his book, ready to reenter the world of the Clutter family and the men who killed them, but something feels off. He’s trying to put his finger on it when Rory leans forward, picks up a pen that had rolled under the table, and hands it wordlessly to him, eyes never leaving her own book.

He takes it from her, amazed that she knew what he was thinking before he did.

“‘ _A kiss and a star_ ,’” he mutters, smiling so widely that it would ruin his brooding rebel image if anyone was to see.

“Hm?” Rory looks up, eyes a little hazy.

“Nothing,” he shakes his head. “Just talking to myself.”

“They say that’s the first sign of madness.”

“Go back to your Wharton.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.”

It’s late autumn and it’s chilly, but not cold. The slightest breeze blows leaves through the air like confetti. The school year has just cranked up again and Jess is reading next to Rory. She understands him like no one ever has before. He is so unbelievably happy.

And maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t hate poetry after all.

**Author's Note:**

> the poems Jess quoted, in order of appearance: "Dog" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Three Laments" by Diane DiPrima, and "Greenwich Village of My Dreams" by Tuli Kupferberg.


End file.
